An impulse system using pellets of uranium or plutonium would be far more realizable than a fusion system. Electron or ion beam systems the size of a dishwasher can achieve pellet compression sufficient to reach critical density for fission. We could have a vehicle that could take off from the Earth's surface, go to the moon, and return with a soft landing. Only problem: lots of radiation emitted into the atmosphere, so such a system would have to be beyond Earth orbit. But it would be ideal for Earth/Moon and Earth/Mars.
Yes. I remember being a kid in the late '60s, with Apollo well underway, thinking that by the '80s we would have visited most of the planets in the solar system, and that we would have real space stations in orbit - rotating ones. Yes, it sure did fall apart.
Yes, the space program does seem to be driven by pork barrel politics. I always had the feeling that the Space Station was conjured up as a way to spend lots of money after the Apollo program was cancelled. What a waste of money that was - we should be on Mars by now.
LOL. At least we see it coming! (at the rate of 10mm/year I think that I can out-run it). 70M years ago the sea level was 300 feet higher than it is today - so there is a long way to go! - I am sure that the coastline will be changing somewhat. Of course there was still plenty of dry land 70M years ago - or the dinosaurs would have been very unhappy! http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/Co...
Yes, I think you have it right on all counts, although I think that we also need to accept that climate does change naturally - even if some portion or even all of this current change is anthropogenic. Humans have always adopted to climate change, from the time of the last ice age through the drying of the Middle East, which was lush not too long ago. We need to stop thinking of the Earth as a stable equilibrium system - it is not.
Yes. There are a-lot of people who cannot think for themselves - they have to be told what to think, even when the facts are actually available with a small amount of searching. And yet, there are so many special interests that benefit from having people think ABC or XYZ - a tug of war for human thoughts. The human condition.
Indeed. Good point. We will adjust, but there will have to be migration to other parts of the globe. I don't agree that climate change threatens civilization - humans survived the last ice age - but it will cause displacement.
Yes, very true. Perhaps climate change is partly anthropogenic - we can't say for sure, but it is possible. Still, if there is even a very slight swing in natural sources of CO2, that swing would overwhelm human sources. I think that we need to stop assuming that nothing will ever change. Should we try to reduce CO2? Yes, I think so, although for all we know the climate might then make a sudden swing the other way.... One thing I do know, is that climate change is not "threatening civilization" as is often said by the media. Rising tides might displace many people - and many of those will be poor and vulnerable - but it does not threaten civilization. And there are equal perils that occur on a regular basis, such as the Asian tsunami of a decade back that wiped out 250,000 people in one day without any warning. Humans are fragile and the Earth often rolls right over us.
You mean that humans created the situation? Perhaps - although one needs to blame the entire human race for that: we live in a system, and that system has behavior. But the question of whether humans created the situation is not so clear. I know that the mainstream news paints that picture, but the facts are less certain. E.g., the CO2 that humans produce is about 1% of what nature produces annually. And yes, global temperature has been rising if you look only at the holocene; but if you go back farther, we are very square on a trend, and global temperature has been much higher than it is today: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/.... And yes, CO2 has been rising, but that is cyclic as well; do you know that during the time of the dinosaurs CO2 was TEN TIMES what it is today? - and yet Earth was verdant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... So humans _might_ be causing global warming, but it is not so clear, and it is also not clear that the ecosystem cannot adjust.
Interesting. And yes, the rest of us will end up paying. Today we have paid for reconstruction in New Orleans (why? - isn't that a Louisiana responsibility?) and we routinely pay for beach reconstruction in towns all across the Atlantic seaboard (why? - isn't that a local responsibility?)
Indeed. Miama, New Orleans, Venice - those places will all be underwater. But this change is inexorable - I think that people should not build new oceanfront property in those places!
Good catch. That works out to 10mm/year. But there are other studies that predict less. 10mm/year is indeed something for a property owner to worry about, but is not something to be alarmed about with respect to safety.
First hotels will build sea walls, like in Venice. Eventually, when the water has risen too much, they will abandon Miami. But it will take many decades - no one is going to be caught by surprise. Land values will gradually decline and be sold and eventually properties will be abandoned. There is no crisis - it is just change that happens over the course of a lifetime - like so many other things.
And yet physics cannot explain consciousness - seems like we have quite a way to go. (Although quantum mechanics seems to tell us that consciousness and reality are somehow linked - seems like there might be quite a bit to explore there.) And we still do not understand our where our universe sits in the total scheme of things - are we in a black hole? And do we really think that there is no new physics in the range of size down to the Plank length? For those who think that we know a-lot about reality, I recommend the book "Doubt and Certainty", by George Sudarshan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._C._George_Sudarshan) and Tony Rothman.
I know how software is made. I know how buggy and unreliable it is. In my car, I want things that are rock solid, or that at least fail gracefully. Also, I don't want distractions, like screens changing their content, or having to fiddle with a display while I am driving. I want fixed controls that are simple and display a single thing. Also, I don't want my car second-guessing what I want - there is nothing more annoying that the car deciding, "He pushed the window button to go down, but it is cold outside so he must only want it half way down" - I want my car to do exactly what I tell it: I don't want it to try to be "smart".
Yes, there is a-lot of programming involved today, but Watson is not just a search engine. So-called "deep learning" algorithms are really neural network simulations. They are programmed because most people don't have neural chips and so to create neural networks, people have to code then as a simulation. That's why IBM has now developed its "True North" chipset, with a million silicon neurons per chip. These are not programmed - they learn - and they run 1000 times faster (and with much less power) that equivalent simulations. Also, if you look at the code for deep learning neural network simulations, you will see that it is an implementation of neural network topologies (e.g., a cascaded restricted botzman network) and training algorithms (e.g., contrastive divergence) - you can't work on that code unless you understand those algorithms - the real work is in developing and fine-tuning the algorithms - not in the coding. Most of the people who work on that code are PhDs in AI - not programmers per se.
It is also true that there is a-lot of "glue code" to make these systems scale, but that is the type of code that I think will eventually be replaced by machine learning systems. But I don't have a crystal ball - we shall see!
Slashdot Mirror
An impulse system using pellets of uranium or plutonium would be far more realizable than a fusion system. Electron or ion beam systems the size of a dishwasher can achieve pellet compression sufficient to reach critical density for fission. We could have a vehicle that could take off from the Earth's surface, go to the moon, and return with a soft landing. Only problem: lots of radiation emitted into the atmosphere, so such a system would have to be beyond Earth orbit. But it would be ideal for Earth/Moon and Earth/Mars.
Yes. I remember being a kid in the late '60s, with Apollo well underway, thinking that by the '80s we would have visited most of the planets in the solar system, and that we would have real space stations in orbit - rotating ones. Yes, it sure did fall apart.
Yes, the space program does seem to be driven by pork barrel politics. I always had the feeling that the Space Station was conjured up as a way to spend lots of money after the Apollo program was cancelled. What a waste of money that was - we should be on Mars by now.
LOL. At least we see it coming! (at the rate of 10mm/year I think that I can out-run it). 70M years ago the sea level was 300 feet higher than it is today - so there is a long way to go! - I am sure that the coastline will be changing somewhat. Of course there was still plenty of dry land 70M years ago - or the dinosaurs would have been very unhappy! http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/Co...
Yes, I think you have it right on all counts, although I think that we also need to accept that climate does change naturally - even if some portion or even all of this current change is anthropogenic. Humans have always adopted to climate change, from the time of the last ice age through the drying of the Middle East, which was lush not too long ago. We need to stop thinking of the Earth as a stable equilibrium system - it is not.
Yes. There are a-lot of people who cannot think for themselves - they have to be told what to think, even when the facts are actually available with a small amount of searching. And yet, there are so many special interests that benefit from having people think ABC or XYZ - a tug of war for human thoughts. The human condition.
Indeed. Good point. We will adjust, but there will have to be migration to other parts of the globe. I don't agree that climate change threatens civilization - humans survived the last ice age - but it will cause displacement.
Yes, very true. Perhaps climate change is partly anthropogenic - we can't say for sure, but it is possible. Still, if there is even a very slight swing in natural sources of CO2, that swing would overwhelm human sources. I think that we need to stop assuming that nothing will ever change. Should we try to reduce CO2? Yes, I think so, although for all we know the climate might then make a sudden swing the other way.... One thing I do know, is that climate change is not "threatening civilization" as is often said by the media. Rising tides might displace many people - and many of those will be poor and vulnerable - but it does not threaten civilization. And there are equal perils that occur on a regular basis, such as the Asian tsunami of a decade back that wiped out 250,000 people in one day without any warning. Humans are fragile and the Earth often rolls right over us.
Good point. Although at some point it is a losing proposition. I guess we are still far from that point though.
You mean that humans created the situation? Perhaps - although one needs to blame the entire human race for that: we live in a system, and that system has behavior. But the question of whether humans created the situation is not so clear. I know that the mainstream news paints that picture, but the facts are less certain. E.g., the CO2 that humans produce is about 1% of what nature produces annually. And yes, global temperature has been rising if you look only at the holocene; but if you go back farther, we are very square on a trend, and global temperature has been much higher than it is today: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/.... And yes, CO2 has been rising, but that is cyclic as well; do you know that during the time of the dinosaurs CO2 was TEN TIMES what it is today? - and yet Earth was verdant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... So humans _might_ be causing global warming, but it is not so clear, and it is also not clear that the ecosystem cannot adjust.
Interesting. And yes, the rest of us will end up paying. Today we have paid for reconstruction in New Orleans (why? - isn't that a Louisiana responsibility?) and we routinely pay for beach reconstruction in towns all across the Atlantic seaboard (why? - isn't that a local responsibility?)
Good point. I think that living near the ocean in low lying areas is a perilous thing!
Indeed. Miama, New Orleans, Venice - those places will all be underwater. But this change is inexorable - I think that people should not build new oceanfront property in those places!
Good catch. That works out to 10mm/year. But there are other studies that predict less. 10mm/year is indeed something for a property owner to worry about, but is not something to be alarmed about with respect to safety.
First hotels will build sea walls, like in Venice. Eventually, when the water has risen too much, they will abandon Miami. But it will take many decades - no one is going to be caught by surprise. Land values will gradually decline and be sold and eventually properties will be abandoned. There is no crisis - it is just change that happens over the course of a lifetime - like so many other things.
Yes but at a sea level rise rate of 2-4mm/year, I think that people will have time to adjust!!
The increases seem to be on the low end. Companies try to hire college grads, to replace senior IT folks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And yet physics cannot explain consciousness - seems like we have quite a way to go. (Although quantum mechanics seems to tell us that consciousness and reality are somehow linked - seems like there might be quite a bit to explore there.) And we still do not understand our where our universe sits in the total scheme of things - are we in a black hole? And do we really think that there is no new physics in the range of size down to the Plank length? For those who think that we know a-lot about reality, I recommend the book "Doubt and Certainty", by George Sudarshan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._C._George_Sudarshan) and Tony Rothman.
Indeed, and that is why "fly by wire" is terrifying to me.
I know how software is made. I know how buggy and unreliable it is. In my car, I want things that are rock solid, or that at least fail gracefully. Also, I don't want distractions, like screens changing their content, or having to fiddle with a display while I am driving. I want fixed controls that are simple and display a single thing. Also, I don't want my car second-guessing what I want - there is nothing more annoying that the car deciding, "He pushed the window button to go down, but it is cold outside so he must only want it half way down" - I want my car to do exactly what I tell it: I don't want it to try to be "smart".
Yes, there is a-lot of programming involved today, but Watson is not just a search engine. So-called "deep learning" algorithms are really neural network simulations. They are programmed because most people don't have neural chips and so to create neural networks, people have to code then as a simulation. That's why IBM has now developed its "True North" chipset, with a million silicon neurons per chip. These are not programmed - they learn - and they run 1000 times faster (and with much less power) that equivalent simulations. Also, if you look at the code for deep learning neural network simulations, you will see that it is an implementation of neural network topologies (e.g., a cascaded restricted botzman network) and training algorithms (e.g., contrastive divergence) - you can't work on that code unless you understand those algorithms - the real work is in developing and fine-tuning the algorithms - not in the coding. Most of the people who work on that code are PhDs in AI - not programmers per se.
It is also true that there is a-lot of "glue code" to make these systems scale, but that is the type of code that I think will eventually be replaced by machine learning systems. But I don't have a crystal ball - we shall see!
Early days, but looks promising: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05...
You have a point. I guess we will have to wait and see!